KHRESTYSHCHE, Ukraine AP - In a cramped municipal building in this former front-line village, a team of volunteer specialists has set up a mobile clinic.
It is a lifeline for the residents. Before Russia's war, access to specialist medical help was only available to those who could get to the city, but the village near the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk did have a primary care doctor.
The village health clinic damaged by the war, its residents have been left with little access to health care, and in particular to specialist care.
There is no doctor. We are without a doctor. They left us alone, wept Mariia Hrebenko, 79, as a doctor took her blood pressure and tried to calm her, gently patting her hand. No one is helping us. Bohdan Avramenko, a 27-year-old cardiologist who is the medical coordinator of FRIDA Ukraine, said the limited availability of health care has resulted in an exacerbation of existing illnesses that could be treated with regular medical attention.
They stay with high blood pressure, with high glucose levels. He said that the teams have been diagnosing an increasing level of cancer. The limited access to the specialists, the limited access to the ultrasound, and the onco logy screening all cause a lot, and a lot of new diagnoses of cancer. The group has been providing specialist doctors through mobile clinics in villages and towns near the front lines and in areas recently retaken by Ukrainian troops from Russian forces, as well as in areas recently retaken by volunteer doctors. They can see anywhere between a few dozen and 250 patients a day, depending on the location, and they try to return to the places they have already visited once a month to provide follow-up care.
Avramenko said that the team also provides childhood vaccinations and the ophthalmologist, the endocrinologist and the cardiologist are the specialists most in demand. On Sunday, 14 doctors working in Khrestyshche were expecting to see about 50 -- 60 patients that day.
The teams of volunteers run the mobile clinics in villages mostly during the weekends as they work in public and private hospitals across Ukraine during the week.
Joseph Farkas, a nurse and former New York police officer, has been with FRIDA Ukraine for about eight months, helping treat families in bomb shelters in towns pummeled by shelling and villages that haven't seen a doctor for months.
He said I wanted to help out. Russia's military invading Ukraine is wrong, and what is going on here. I wanted to do my part in helping out the people here. Olena Chetskaya, 38, said both a general practitioner and a pediatrician had worked in the village before the war, but now there was no one to write referrals for specialists, leaving a trip to Sloviansk as the only option.
She said it was very important for the volunteer clinic as she waited in line to see a doctor. We have a lot of old people and they don't have the opportunity to leave and go to the city. One of them was Lyubo Rimar, 74, who sat patiently waiting for the endocrinologist. She had not been feeling well all morning and felt a lot of pressure on her head.
She said that is important of course, and that is a matter of importance for the volunteer group's services. We are old, and all the illnesses come to us.